Tone is an attitude that an author has toward their subject. In both the essay, “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard and the poem “Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the authors portray a strong tone of admiration toward nature, specifically animals. Through using exceptional word choice, thorough ideas, and relevant examples.
In the essay, “Living Like Weasels” Annie Dillard achieved a tone of admiration, by using strong thoughts. For example, in the essay Annie states, “In winter the steers stand in the middle of Tinker Creek, merely dampening their hooves. They look like miracles, complete with miracle nonchalance.” This statement made by the Annie is portraying how she looks at these animals as if they’re beautiful miracles, she looks at them in admiration. Another example in this essay of the author showing admiration toward nature is presented in this statement where Annie is showing she was in total surprise,
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and admiration of the weasels’ appearance. “Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly, when each had thought of something else; a blow to the gut.” The most vivid example of admiration in the essay by Annie Dillard, in my opinion, is the following, “I would like to live as I should, like the weasel. Open to time and death, noticing everything, and remembering nothing, choosing the give with a fierce and pointed will.” This is the most vivid example in this essay to me because the author admires the weasel so much, that she wants to live like it. There are many examples of admiration in the poem, “Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, but the following are the examples that stood out most to me.
In the poem Elizabeth is talking about a fish that she catches and is admiring. Elizabeth writes, “its’ pattern of darker brown was like ancient wallpaper; shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age,” The author is showing admiration in this statement, because he isn’t just seeing a fish as this ugly thing, she is comparing to a beautiful piece of ancient wallpaper. In the poem Elizabeth also states, “I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw.” This is the most straightforward example of admiration in this piece of writing because Elizabeth is flat-out telling us that she is admiring this fish. The last example of admiration in this piece, that stood out to me is when Elizabeth states, “ I looked into his eyes, which were far larger than mine.” This phrase is showing that instead of just catching the fish and eating it like it was no big deal. Elizabeth is looking into it’s eyes and admiring
it. These two passage, “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard, and “Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop present strong tones of admiration towards nature, through vivid examples, strong word choice, and ideas that show how they feel.
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
Professor Ken Macrorie is frustrated, and through his article “The Poison Fish” is willing to help college students become good writers instead of using phony and pretentious language to impress their teachers. He names this language, Engfish through his frustration of the use of the phony language he explains why it is bad, and then with an optimistic tone gives hsi college students a way to become great writers .
Nature’s beauty has the ability to both entice its audience and frighten them. Mary Oliver in her passage explains her experiences with the two sides of nature. Her experiences with the owls elicit both an awe response and a frightened one. In connection, her experiences with a field of flowers draws a similar response where she is both astonished by them and overwhelmed. Oliver’s complex responses display the two sides of nature. It's ability to be both captivating yet overwhelming in its complexity. In “Owl” Mary Oliver uses descriptions of nature demonstrated by owls and fields of flowers in order to convey her complex responses to the two sides of nature.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
Elizabeth Bishop's use of imagery and diction in "The Fish" is meant to support the themes of observation and the deceptive nature of surface appearance. Throughout the course of the poem these themes lead the narrator to the important realization that aging (as represented by the fish) is not a negative process, and allows for a reverie for all life. Imagery and diction are the cornerstone methods implemented by Bishop in the symbolic nature of this poem.
Her poetry is greatly informed by her childhood in hockey town Swift Current, Saskatchewan, with that environmental aesthetic often forming the backdrop to her stories of poverty, alcoholism, and the natural world. As a prairie girl myself, it’s easy for me to picture the agricultural landscapes and rustic animals described in poems such as “Inventing the Hawk”. Her authorial voice is wistful yet confessional, a voice that looks back fondly, but not blind to the issues of the past. Sex is also a recurring theme of her work, and the intimacies of her relationship with her husband Patrick Lane are a common topic of her work. One of her poems, “Watching My Lover”, tells of Lane bathing his dying mother, the mother’s scent lingering "so everyone who lies with him / will know he’s still / his mother’s son". Animals from cats to horses feature heavily in her work, tying in once again to her love of nature.
Throughout the first half of the poem, Bishop describes the fish as an inanimate object, as reflected in her comparisons, which uses objects to describe the fish as shown when she says, “Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper…”. (9-11) She chooses a wallpaper to describe the skin of the fish in order to accurately portray its battered and worn state; her decision to compare the fish to an inorganic ...
The first element to analyze when looking at “The Fish” is figurative language. The reader is drawn to this element because of its heavy emphasis throughout the poem. Elizabeth Bishop profusely uses similes with the intention of heightening the sensation of fishing. She writes:
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
Jim shows a respect for nature and a complete unity in nature that highlights his romantic view of the world. In his grandmother’s garden Jim describes himself as “something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and [he] did not want to be anything more [and he] was entirely happy” (14). Jim displays a perfect union with nature, an understanding brought about by his romantic perspectives of life. His romanticism is further emphasized in the way he highlights nature’s beauty and finds a deeper meaning to nature. In an account from his memoir, Jim recalls the view of the prairie in autumn afternoon the, “miles of copper-red grass . . . drenched in sunlight . . . stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day . . .the hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero’s death - heroes who died young and gloriously” (28). His use of comparing the fiery prairie to the excitement of a hero’s death after a victorious battle shows his ability to evoke emotion out of nature and see a deeper meaning to the natural world around him. Moreover, Jim describes a scene of a plough in a sunset as “magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun . . . it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun” (156). Jim’s description of the plough
Each being has both evil attributes and good attributes. There is no life untouched by evil; no matter how ostensibly innocent or beautiful a creature is, evil infects the experiences of every creature. In the story, Oliver expresses this evil in the form of the great horned owl by likening the owl to an “insatiable” “death bringer” that revels in killing. Just as the owl preys on the most beloved of creatures, puppies and rabbits, and on the most hated, snakes and skunks, evil sinks its talons into the lives of all types of people. In this way, nothing can be completely pure or good. Oliver furthers this argument at the end of the passage by comparing the roses to the owl, which had, until that point, been described at a stark contrast to each other. By asking if the roses are “not also- even as the owl is- excessive,” Oliver is admitting that the gorgeous, fragrant flowers are not completely pure, but are in some ways, bad or evil. Likewise, the poppies and lupines that the narrator imagines when thinking of summerfields are beautiful, but also very poisonous to animals, suggesting that beauty does not preclude danger or moral contamination. Conversely, no being is completely evil, either. Thbe depravity of the great horned owl is redeemed by the attributes of its cousins; the tiny saw-whet is delicate and soft, and the snowy owl is bright and intelligent. By describing the other types of owls with words that invoke thoughts of beauty and goodness, Oliver is able to retain the use of the great horned owl as a symbol for evil while proving the dual morality of owls as a whole. Additionally, the great horned owl is described as a “pure wild hunter,” words that portray the animal favorably and turn it into something to be respected, rather than a mindless killer. The dual nature of a living being’s morality
She says “writing can be an expression of one 's innermost feelings. It can allow the reader to tap into the deepest recesses of one 's heart and soul. It is indeed the gifted author that can cause the reader to cry at her words and feel hope within the same poem. Many authors as well, as ordinary people use writing as a way to release emotions.” She makes plenty points in her review that I completely agree with. After reading the poem I think that Elizabeth Barret Browning is not only the author of her famous poem, but also the speaker as well. She is a woman simply expressing her love for her husband in a passionate way through poetry. In the 1st Line it reads “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” A woman drunk in love she is, and next she begins to count the numerous ways she can love her significant
The poet compares the imperfections of summer to contradict the iridescent outer beauty of the girl he loves. Even though the summer seems like the best season, it is always undesirably “too short” (4) and nature always has its faults but the girl does not. Sometimes it’s “too hot” (5) and sometimes on a beautiful day its gold complexion is even dimmed, the clouds overcast which is believed, by some, to foreshadow bad luck. But her beauty is never overcast by something else nor her “gold complexion dimmed” (6). However, all these imperfections are not natural for her. She, he praises, is “more lovely” and “more temperate” than a summer’s day (2). In praising her beauty he even emphasizes the word “more”. Both lovely and temperate are words that show effective use of diction. While he does choose words that accurately express his feelings they also have strong connotations lovely could imply high attractiveness and exquisite beauty and temperate could imply that she is by nature a very strong, yet mild and self controlled person.
...er readers. Dickinson’s use of literary devices and her creativity enables her to imaginatively describe the beauty and grace from a simple and familiar observation. It is through her use of tone, imagery, and sound that she exploits a keen sense of respect for at the very least the little bird, if not also nature itself. Dickinson recreates and expresses the magnificence and smoothness of the bird soaring across the sky. She uses tone to create the mood to emphasize the theme. She uses sound and imagery to not only tell the reader about the awesome flight of the bird, but to help the reader experience and connect to the little bird and nature in hope that they too will learn to respect nature.
I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Not only is this showing the kind of fulfillment he receives from nature, but also the power that nature possesses in his mind.... ... middle of paper ... ...